Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Psychotic Without Knowing It

Psychotic Without
Knowing It

By Jason

Surviving the Rollercoaster of
Untreated Mental Illness

The last twenty
years of my mental illness have been slowly progressive.

It all began
while serving in the military in 1993. I started to have this feeling
that I was being talked about and followed by others. After the
military, in 1995, while living in Berlin, Germany, these feelings
continued along with the sense that someone was spiking my food and
drinks as a joke. At that time, I could only hold a job for a couple
of months at a time.

In 2005, I went
to London. There, I started experiencing an on and off sensation of
fingers touching my body (known as tactile hallucinations). Soon I
started believing I was a victim of witchcraft. In London, I began to
think that someone was angel-dusting (putting PCP in) the places I
would sit to cause these hallucinations as a prank. I thought it was
a newly developed hallucinogenic that was being soaked through my
skin. This was the beginning of my psychosis.

I started to have
delusional thoughts, believing things that were unreal, but which I
perceived to be real. It was while I was living in London that I
first became an inpatient at a mental hospital. I started to believe
that street signs were put up to remind me of the past (delusions of
reference). This is when everything becomes a coincidence. I also
started believing that I was a victim of a prank and I was being left
out. I started to believe that behind my back I was famous (delusions
of grandeur). I was paranoid but hid it well. When I would go into a
grocery store, I would believe all the customers and employees there
were waiting for me.

After London,
while in Washington State, I started reading license plates and brand
names on peoples’ clothing, and thinking that there must be some
sort of hidden meaning. I started believing that the things said or
seen on the television had secret meaning about me. In Washington
State I tried to commit suicide a few times and was sent to the
mental hospital. California has section 5150 which allows
a qualified officer or clinician to involuntarily confinea
person suspected to have a mental disorder that makes him or her a
danger to self, a danger to others, and/or gravely disabled.In Washington there are no 5150s. The justice
system in Washington will put a person in jail for having an episode
and give misdemeanor charges. I went through a vicious cycle of
mental hospitals, emergency rooms, ICUs, jails and courts in
Washington State.

When I got to
California I got real sick. I started to believe I was on camera 24/7
as a prank (which is The Truman Show delusion) and that my family
members were switched by impostors and wealthy actors (which is
Capgras syndrome, aka delusional misidentification syndrome). I then
started to believe I was a POW and that I was still in Germany and
WWIII was happening behind my back—because Anaheim is in California
and Anaheim is a German name. Heim means home in the German language
and Germany was also involved in WWI and WWII. Then I started to
believe that the military was looking to rescue me from Germany and
that enemy snipers were in the trees. So I started crawling around my
condo in the dark to avoid being shot at by snipers through my window
(as I had learned to do in boot camp while having live ammunition
shot over my head).

Sometimes in my
condo, I would hear machine guns firing and black hawk helicopters
hovering right outside. I would also hear people speaking the German
language outside my condo. So I got a baseball bat to sleep with to
protect myself and destroyed my heater/air conditioner, cellphone and
computer internet modem and turned all electricity off in my condo. I
avoided human contact and believed any and every person I saw was an
actor. I thought that if one person was on a cell phone walking by
me, the person was talking about me.

Last summer I
became gravely disabled. I thought that if a person was driving next
to me, behind me, or in front of me, the drivers were following me. I
thought it was all arranged with cell phone communication. I got
diagnosed with psychotic disorder, then schizoaffective disorder,
then bipolar, and schizophrenia. My current diagnosis has reverted
back to psychotic disorder. However, it does not matter what I am
diagnosed with at the moment because most of my symptoms are gone,
thanks to the medication that I only need to take once a month.

Presently, I
think like a normal man as I did when I was younger. I have very rare
audio hallucinations and rare tactile hallucinations but I am not
delusional or paranoid any longer. I also do not believe that
everyone is an actor trying to fool me, like in “Rosemary's Baby.”
After I moved to Citrus Heights from Washington State a year and a
half ago I had three 5150s in a four-month period in the summer of
2013. Since October 2013, I have found a medication that works, an
injection once a month. I can easily slip off of an oral medication,
thinking: "Oh, I am better now, so why should I take the
medication? There is nothing wrong with me.” Luckily, I have no
side-effects from the medication and I do not even notice a
medication in my system.

I now realize
that alcohol had played a major role in my dramas during my vicious
cycle of mental illness. Now I do not need to drink so much because
most of my symptoms are gone. Since 1994 I have had a very slow
progressive illness, so slow that I had a condition known in a
neurological study as Anosognosia,
a deficit of self-awareness, a condition in which a person who
suffers a certaindisabilityseems unaware
of the existence of his or her disability
(Wikipedia) and that means that a person is without knowledge of
something being wrong and without knowledge of having a disability.
Up until October, 2013 I was in complete denial that I had a mental
illness. It was then that I began reaching out for help and got the
help I needed. Talk therapy seems to have helped the most.